Within two class periods, it's obvious to my university students that I'm a sticky note hound. We use them to help organize our thinking before and during class discussions and to mark important passages within the text. As we go through various assessment forms to use with their future students, they use sticky notes to mark what they particularly like or dislike about the individual form. I use them as I take anecdotal notes and when I write brief comments to students. In my early days of teaching, I even used them as I graded student papers. I wrote my comment on a postit note and affixed it to the student's paper because I thought (for some reason) that I shouldn't write directly on their papers - that it might be defacing them in some way. Well, that didn't last but a semester or two before I realized how much faster it is to write a comment directly on a student's paper than on a post-it note. (However, I still take care not to use the dreaded red pen.)
Recently Dave and I watched a movie where the main character, an investigative reporter, did his best thinking with a marker and a blank wall. He wrote his thoughts directly onto the wall and when his problem was solved, repainted the wall to give himself a blank slate for the next time. I found I could totally relate to him - give me a pack of sticky notes and a large space on which to place them and you never know what just might show up. When I was creating the syllabus for the graduate class I'm currently teaching I ended up going to an empty classroom and using the chalkboard to help create a "graphic organizer" of sorts - that way I could see the three week class all spread out and see if the preliminary planning made sense. Today, we're on Day 8 of 12 and so far so good. Thank you sticky notes and big spaces!
It's too bad you don't get any incentives from 3M for all those young minds you are bending to the way of post-its... teachers everywhere celebrating the sticky note.
ReplyDeleteFifteen years ago, when I first started teaching, we hardly used them at all (were they even invented yet, I don't remember) and now it seems like they're a part of every teacher's yearly supply list. If I remember correctly, last year it was on either Sophie or Lucy's school supply list - much in the same way it's common for teachers to ask each student to bring in a box of kleenex. They're just so darn useful!
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